In producing a press-molded product of a thin steel sheet, a process of coating and baking at lower than 200° C. is used as a method in which a material having low deformation stress before press forming to facilitate press forming, and then hardened after press forming to increased the strength of a part. As a steel sheet for such coating and baking, a BH steel sheet has been developed.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 55-141526 discloses a method in which Nb is added according to the contents of C, N and Al of steel, Nb/(dissolved C+dissolved N) by at% is limited in a specified range, and the cooling rate after annealing is controlled to adjust dissolved C and dissolved N in a steel sheet. Also, Japanese Examined Patent Application Publication No. 61-45689 discloses a method in which baking hardenability is improved by adding Ti and Nb.
However, in order to improve deep drawability, strength of the raw material sheets of the above-described steel sheets is decreased, and thus the steel sheets are not always sufficient as structural materials.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 5-25549 discloses a method in which baking hardenability is improved by adding W, Cr and Mo to steel singly or in a combination.
In the above-described conventional techniques, strength is increased by bake-hardening due to the functions of small amounts of dissolved C and dissolved N in a steel sheet, and it is well known that a BH(Bake-Hardening) steel sheet is used for increasing only the yield strength of a material, not for increasing tensile strength. Therefore, the conventional techniques have only the effect of increasing the deformation start stress of a part, and the effect of increasing stress (tensile strength after forming) required for deformation over the entire deformation region from the deformation start to the deformation end is not said to be sufficient.
As a cold-rolled steel sheet having tensile strength increased after forming, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 10-310847 discloses an alloying ho-dip galvanized steel sheet having tensile strength increased by 60 MPa or more by heat treatment in the temperature region of 200 to 450° C.
This steel sheet contains, by mass %, 0.01 to 0.08% of C, and 0.01 to 3.0% of Mn, and at least one of W, Cr, and Mo in a total of 0.05 to 3.0%, and further contains at least one of 0.005 to 0.1% of Ti, 0.005 to 0.1% of Nb and 0.005 to 0.1% of V according to demand, and the microstructure of the steel is composed of ferrite or mainly composed of ferrite.
However, this technique comprises forming a fine carbide in the steel sheet by heat treatment after forming to effectively propagate a dislocation of stress applied during pressing, thereby increasing the amount of strain. Therefore, heat treatment must be performed in the temperature range of 220 to 370° C. There is thus the problem of a necessary heat treatment temperature higher than general bake-hardening temperatures.
Furthermore, it is a very important problem that the body weight of an automobile is decreased in relation to the recent regulation of exhaust gases due to global environmental problems. In order to decrease the body weight of an automobile, it is effective to increase the strength of the used steel sheet, i.e., use a high-tensile-strength steel sheet, thinning the steel sheet used.
An automobile part using a high-tensile-strength thin steel sheet must exhibit a sufficient property according to its function. The property depends upon the part, and examples of the property include dent resistance, static strength against deformation such as bending, twisting, or the like, fatigue resistance, impact resistance, etc. Namely, the high-tensile-strength steel sheet used for an automobile part is required to be excellent in such a property after forming. The properties are related to the strength of a steel sheet after forming, and thus the lower limit of strength of the high-tensile-strength steel sheet used must be set for achieving thinning.
On the other hand, in the process for forming an automobile part, a steel sheet is press-molded. If the steel sheet has excessively high strength in press forming, the steel sheet causes the following problems: (1) deteriorating shape fixability; (2) deteriorating ductility to cause cracking, necking, or the like during forming; and (3) deteriorating dent resistance (resistance to a dent produced by a local compressive load) when the sheet thickness is decreased. These problems thus inhibit the extension of application of the high-tensile-strength steel sheet to automobile bodies.
As a means for overcoming the problems, a steel sheet composed of ultra-low-carbon steel is known as a raw material, for example, for a cold-rolled steel sheet for an external sheet panel, in which the content of C finally remaining in a solid solution state is controlled to an appropriate range. This type of steel sheet is kept soft during press forming to ensure shape fixability and ductility, and its yield stress is increased by utilizing the strain aging phenomenon which occurs in the step of coating and baking at 170° C. for about 20 minutes after press forming, to ensure dent resistance. This steel sheet is soft during press forming because C is dissolved in steel, while dissolved C is fixed to a dislocation introduced in press forming in the coating and baking step after press forming to increase the yield stress.
However, in this type of steel sheet, the increase in yield stress due to strain age hardening is kept down from the viewpoint of prevention of the occurrence of stretcher strain causing a surface defect. This causes the fault that the steel sheet actually less contributes to a reduction in weight of a part.
On the other hand, a steel sheet composed of dissolved N to further increase the amount of bake-hardening, and a steel sheet provided with a composite structure composed of ferrite and martensite to further improve baking hardenability have been proposed for applications in which the appearance is not so important.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 60-52528 discloses a method of producing a high-strength steel thin sheet having good ductility and spot weldability, in which steel containing 0.02 to 0.15 of C, 0.8 to 3.5% of Mn, 0.02 to 0.15% of P, 0.10% or less of Al, and 0.005 to 0.025% of N is hot-rolled by coiling at a temperature of 550° C. or less, cold-rolled, and then annealed by controlled cooling and heat treatment. A steel sheet produced by the technique disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 60-52528 has a mixed structure comprising a low-temperature transformation product phase mainly composed of ferrite and martensite, and having excellent ductility, and high strength is achieved by utilizing strain aging due to positively added N during coating baking.
Although the technique disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 60-52528 greatly increases yield stress YS due to strain age hardening, the technique less increases tensile strength TS. Also, this technique causes large variations in the increment in yield stress YS to cause large variations in mechanical properties, and thus it cannot be expected that a steel sheet can be sufficiently thinned for contributing to a reduction in weight of an automobile part, which is currently demanded.
Japanese Examined Patent Application Publication No. 5-24979 discloses a high-tensile-strength cold-rolled steel thin sheet having baking hardenability which has a composition comprising 0.08 to 0.20% of C, 1.5 to 3.5% of Mn, and the balance composed of Fe and inevitable impurities, and a structure composed of homogeneous bainite containing 5% or less of ferrite, or bainite partially containing martensite. The cold-rolled steel sheet disclosed in Japanese Examined Patent Application Publication No. 5-24979 is produced by quenching in the temperature range of 200 to 400° C. in the cooling process after continuous annealing, and then slowly cooling to obtain a structure mainly composed of bainite and having a large amount of bake-hardening which is not obtained by a conventional method.
However, in the steel sheet disclosed in Japanese Examined Patent Application Publication No. 5-24979, yield strength is increased after coating and baking to obtain a large amount of bake-hardening which is not obtained a conventional method, while tensile strength cannot be increased. Therefore, in application to a strength member, improvements in fatigue resistance and impact resistance after forming cannot be expected. Therefore, there is a problem in which the steel sheet cannot be used for applications greatly required to have fatigue resistance and impact resistance, etc.
Also, Japanese Examined Patent Application Publication No. 61-12008 discloses a method of producing a high-tensile-strength steel sheet having a high r value. This method is characterized by annealing ultra-low-C steel used as a raw material in a ferrite-austenite coexistence region after cold rolling. However, the resultant steel sheet has a high r value and a high degree of baking hardenability (BH property), but the obtained BH amount is about 60 MPa at most. Also, the yield point of the steel sheet is increased after strain aging, but TS is not increased, thereby causing the problem of limiting application to parts.
Furthermore, the above-described steel sheet exhibits excellent strength after coating and baking in a simple tensile test, but produces large variations in strength during plastic deformation under actual pressing conditions. Therefore, it cannot be said that the steel sheet is sufficiently applied to parts required to have reliability.
With respect of a hot-rolled steel sheet among coating baked steel sheets for press molded products, for example, Japanese Examined Patent Application Publication No. 8-23048 discloses a method of producing a hot-rolled steel sheet which is soft during processing, and has tensile strength increased by coating and baking after processing to be effective to improve fatigue resistance.
In this technique, steel contains 0.02 to 0.13 mass % of C, and 0.0080 to 0.0250 mass % of N, and the finisher deliver temperature and the coiling temperature are controlled to leave a large amount of dissolved N in the steel, thereby forming a composite structure as a metal structure mainly composed of ferrite and martensite. Therefore, an increase of 100 MPa or more in tensile strength is achieved at the heat treatment temperature of 170° C. after forming.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 10-183301 discloses a hot-rolled steel sheet having excellent baking hardenability and natural aging resistance, in which the C and N contents are limited to 0.01 to 0.12 mass % and 0.0001 to 0.01 mass %, respectively, and the average crystal grain diameter is controlled to 8 μm or less to ensure a BH amount of as high as 80 MPa or more, and suppress the AI amount to 45 MPa or less.
However, this steel sheet is a hot-rolled sheet, and is thus difficult to obtain a high r value because the ferrite aggregation texture is made random due to austeniste-ferrite transformation. Therefore, the steel sheet cannot be said to have sufficient deep drawability.
Furthermore, even if the hot-rolled steel sheet obtained by this technique is used as a starting material for cold rolling and recrystallization annealing, the increase in tensile-strength obtained after forming and heat treatment is not always equivalent to a hot-rolled steel sheet, and a BH amount of as high as 80 MPa or more cannot be always obtained. This is because the microstructure of the cold-rolled steel becomes different from that of hot-rolled one due to cold rolling and recrystallization annealing, and strain greatly accumulates during cold rolling to easily form a carbide, a nitride or a carbonitride, thereby changing the states of dissolved C and dissolved N.
In consideration of the above-described present conditions, an object of the present invention is to provide a cold-rolled steel sheet and a hot-dip galvanized steel sheet (including an alloyed steel sheet) for deep drawing, which have excellent deep drawability, TS×r value≧750 MPa, and excellent strain aging harden ability (BH≧80 MPa and ΔTS≧40 MPa), and an effective method of producing these steel sheets.
Another object of the present invention is to solve the above problems of the conventional techniques and provide a high-tensile-strength cold-rolled steel sheet which is suitable for automobile parts required to have high moldability, softness and high moldability, and stable material properties, and which can easily be molded to an automobile part having a complicated shape without producing shape defects such as spring back, twisting, and curving, and cracking, etc., and which has sufficient strength as an automobile part after heat treatment of a molded automobile part to permit sufficient contribution to a reduction in body weight of an automobile, a high r value of 1.2 or more, and excellent strain age hardenability. A further-object of the present invention is to provide an industrial production method capable of producing the steel sheet at low cost without disturbing its shape.